Which is ironic considering people were apparently bitching about having to run the same dungeons over and over again and the develiopers insist the game is just chalk full of options and variety now...

There's options, but gear inflation makes them unchallenging and unrewarding, so they're not really a part of character progression.

I don't get why all these people who don't do LFR because they raid normal/heroic whine about something that they aren't doing something anyway.
Something that a LOT of players in wow do, because they either can't always come to a raid twice a week or aren't good enough to do even flex, LFR is the place where they go.
About gear from LFR, this is a lot below flex/normal/heroic gear. LFR people don't get the same gear as flex/normal/heroic raiders, so i don't get why they are even acting so jaelous towards LFR people, the people that have lesser gear than the flex/normal/heroic raiders.

There's options, but gear inflation makes them unchallenging and unrewarding, so they're not really a part of character progression.

Well is an inconsequential option really an option? The "options" are just meant to shove you down the path you listed without actually being significant alternatives.

The hammer comes down:

Originally Posted by Osmeric

Normal should be reduced in difficulty. Heroic should be reduced in difficulty.
And the tiny fraction for whom heroic raids are currently well tuned? Too bad,so sad! With the arterial bleed of subs the fastest it's ever been, the vanity development that gives you guys your own content is no longer supportable.

Indeed although you can make a case that a bigger gap exacerbates this further. So that 496 gear may as well be last expansions gear when somebody has 70 ilvls more after upgrades.

Last edited by Glorious Leader; 2013-11-03 at 10:50 PM.

The hammer comes down:

Originally Posted by Osmeric

Normal should be reduced in difficulty. Heroic should be reduced in difficulty.
And the tiny fraction for whom heroic raids are currently well tuned? Too bad,so sad! With the arterial bleed of subs the fastest it's ever been, the vanity development that gives you guys your own content is no longer supportable.

Proving Grounds are flawed in that it doesn't simulate a real raid situation and isn't well balanced enough to account for every class or spec (or the fact before certain gear levels some specs are utter trash).

Connected Realms and Flex doesn't solve the rampant elitism that's saturated into the game community. You can get judged in LFR but 9/10 nothing else will happen. With Flex if you don't measure up to whatever ridiculously high standards are demanded then you'll never get anywhere 9/10. I'm a fortunate exception, in that I applied to a guild while really badly geared on a brand new character and was taken in purely because of my charm and wit - a very rare exception, which paid off for my guild in the long run. The average PUG is not as generous or reasonable.

i dont know what ridiculously high standards you mean, i dont really need to do flex ever but a couple times ive done it, i dont think have people with 530 ilvl+ doing 60k dps is anywhere near acceptable by any players standards. which is probably why the bar is set high, because people who refuse to even try like its LFR ruin it for the people who possibly WANT to learn.

But to OP if LFR were to be removed, i would propose casual players, who want to raid learn how to not keyboard and study their class. i guess you can somewhat consider me a casual, as i really only log on for raid, and were currently 3/14H. the way i see it, if you have enough time to sit in a 30 minute queue, wipe to a boss until you have the appropriate amount of stacks of determination to make the boss a bigger joke, wait in between bosses for another tank to connect, and do this 4 times EVERY WEEK (for each wing). you have enough time to study a class, learn a fight, and attempt to progress as a player and a raider.

Most likely, he feels forced to do it so he can qualify for flex groups.

The character I am running Flex in this tier did very little SoO LFR before hitting Flex. And if Flex had been available from the start of the expansion, I doubt I'd have done much LFR on him at any point. It just wouldn't have been necessary.

"There is a pervasive myth that making content hard will induce players to rise to the occasion. We find the opposite. " -- Ghostcrawler
"Almost every time I have gotten to know a critic personally, they keep up with the criticism but lose the venom." -- Ghostcrawler
I hate these casual Fridays ruining it for real Fridays.

Solo scenarios that have multiple difficulties sorta like the system for proving grounds (bronze, silver, gold, endless) that is challenging (less so than the warlock green fire quest but still pretty tough) at the max difficulty and awards gear using random rolls sort of thing that has a new stat that boosts your damage and damage reduction in these special scenarios. This would prevent gear overlap so raiders don't feel forced into getting this gear in order to be super competitive with other raiding guilds.

I want to add that these would be LONG scenarios as well with multiple boss fights culminating in one super cool end boss. Since they are solo though there will be certain checkpoints throughout so that if you need to leave after the first 30 minutes of a 2 hour scenario you aren't forced to start over again. This promotes the idea of being able to come in whenever and progress as far as you want without feeling like you HAVE to succeed before your free time is up.

MMOs really were not designed for people who cant dedicate time to them. Very few can manage this and wow is up there on the list. The only other I can think of is runescape because its mostly single player.

The character I am running Flex in this tier did very little SoO LFR before hitting Flex. And if Flex had been available from the start of the expansion, I doubt I'd have done much LFR on him at any point. It just wouldn't have been necessary.

I had the same experience on my main. On greener alts, it's a different story

Benevolence is a luxury for the strong - Wrathion
Plox. I got your plox right fucking here. - Animalhouse
I still prefer seeing Thrall rather than blood in my urine, that doesnt make him a good character. - Verdugo

There are a lot of speeches, that so-called "casuals" do need "end-game" content. Why is that? Why raids? Your "end-game" content should be determined by how far you reached. If you can't or don't want progress through raids, then your "end-game" should be heroics 5 mans or collecting pets, or whatever.

Agreed, but Blizzard didn't want to create 5-mans for casuals. There are only 6 new 5-mans for MoP. Assuming you didn't do them while leveling up, you will probably have worked your way through every single one of them in under a week at level cap, even playing one or two hours a night. After that? Unsubscribe. That's why Blizzard gave casuals raids. They didn't want to create more dungeons, so they watered down the raid and threw it to casuals as pity content. I agree with you that it was a bad idea, but I understand the reasoning behind it. Without LFR there is very little in the way of content for casuals this expansion. Collecting pets? They pretty much nerfed that this expansion with the introduction of pet battles. Pokemon is a one-time fee and has a much more compelling plot to go with the pet battles. Pets used to be something that you had to look for and grind towards. Now they're just check boxes that you tick off your to-do list.

Originally Posted by Lins

There are a lot of content for "casuals_who_don't_have_time_to_play" (while playing more than most good raiders) like achievements or pet battles.

Sorry, but My Little Panda Island Adventure and Pokemon just isn't going to retain subs. Honestly I don't think that LFR is retaining subs very well either.

Originally Posted by Lins

No, they grind low-quality gear while imagine themselves as raiders, gear which they doesn't need since they don't progress further.

I have news for you. Blizzard considers them raiders too. That's why the name of the tool you use to queue is "Raid Finder." You can cry yourself to sleep at night with the comforting thought that those players aren't really raiding but ultimately Blizzard decides what is and isn't raiding in their game. Also, casuals need better gear as the expansion goes on just like raiders do. That's how your character progresses and grows in power. Those goats on the stupid cooking dailies used to headbutt my shaman two or three times before I could kill them. Now most of the time they can't even get one head butt off. That's because I got better gear. The same thing happens to raids. When I was doing heroic raids in Cataclysm my guild got to the point where we could bounce the ping pong ball ten times and kill Zon'ozz in one go when we finally let it hit him. That's in contrast to our first kill where we couldn't take more than 5-7 bounces at a time, had to let the ball hit him multiple times, and barely squeaked by the enrage. Casual players crave that same sense of power just as much as raiders do. That's what keeps them subbed: the idea that their character is going to be a little more powerful next week than they were this week.

Originally Posted by Lins

WoW was an RPG once, but with all those menus and modes, separated pvp and pve, queues and etc i feel it becomes less solid, less of rpg and more like a bunch of mini games while in one world and setting but only slightly integrated together.

What does that have to do with raids? I agree that the game has devolved from RPG-centric content and into a set of mini-games, and that's a shame. I still don't see what that has to do with making raids accessible.

Originally Posted by Lins

Blizzard does great, but i think they choose a wrong path. For example we need some group content for 2-3 people? They say scenario? I call it group quest. May be even random daily group quest. Back in vanilla there was no random dailies, connected realms, solo scenarios, phase quests and many things.

Exactly. There were tons of things to do, and none had anything to do with "the end game." A group quest (I completely agree that scenarios are just that) is something I want to do once per character. I would redo those to help out a guild mate, but otherwise I don't see the point. There are only so many times that I want to fetch the damn hunter's log or loot pearls from the pond or collect cinder peppers or what have you. I don't need to do that crap over and over and over. It's not fun.

Originally Posted by Lins

Its hard to find group for 5ppl\raid\whatever? That's why we had guilds in the first place! But instead of making game in a way to motivate community stand together and do things - they look for easier ways and make all those dungeon finders and modes_for_everyone. Sorry for my bad english.

Unfortunately now guilds are for perks and that's it. It used to be that you'd stumble across people while playing, group up with them, and find out you got along with them. That's how guilds were formed. Now you stumble into Stormwind at level 6 and you're instantly spammed by guilds with recruiting addons. Players no longer say, "LF raiding guild," or "LF leveling guild," or "LF casual guild." Instead they say, "LF level 25 guild."

So I agree that you've pointed out many of the problems with the current game, but the question still remains. Without LFR then what? Blizzard has pretty much indicated that they're not going to do raids and 5-mans. It's going to be one or the other.

- - - Updated - - -

Originally Posted by NoNamedPride

Why should we surrender the Fun we have as Groups so single individuals can have their fun?

Who is asking you to surrender anything? This expansion all the new content has been aimed at raiders. LFR is pity content that isn't even tested before release. They just water down the mechanics and see how painful it is on week 1 of release. After that they nerf the fights that are still too hard for random groups.

Originally Posted by NoNamedPride

The way I see Casuals behave most of the time tells me there'll be no Community even if we empathize to them.

I see casuals behave pretty well for the most part. There's always one or two idiots in the bunch, but I've seen plenty of stupidity on both the casual as well as on the raiding side of the aisle.

Originally Posted by NoNamedPride

Because they just want to do their shit in the hour or 15 minutes they can surrender for the sake of it. And that's not what the Game is about.

That's not what the game is about for you. Everyone decides what the game is about themselves. That's the nature of role playing games. Some people power through Zelda to beat Gannon ASAP. Others meticulously win every mini-game and collect every item before finally wrapping up the story. To each their own. You can't tell others how they should be playing because that's their decision to make.

Originally Posted by NoNamedPride

And if the Soul of the whole thing is the thing that needs to be surrendered so that it can live a few years longer - we should just let it go as the Game it always was. An MMORPG.

MMORPG =/= Raiding. Maybe for you, but not necessarily for everyone else. You'll just have to accept that.

- - - Updated - - -

Originally Posted by Strangewayes

I mean outside of raiding, WoW is basically dead. There is no content outside of raids for solo players or groups. There's nothing that could allow me to play for 2 hours whenever I please where I can leave the group at any time with no major repercussions.

Oh wait, yes there is.

World Bosses

Seriously? How many weeks are you going to repeatedly kill the same boss before finally calling it quits? A world boss is a weekly chore that you do until he no longer drops any gear for you. It's not compelling gameplay. Sadly, that's pretty much how I feel about raids too.

That's fun for like the first day. After that it's just a chore. Again, not a good way to retain subscribers.

Originally Posted by Strangewayes

Farming
other Farming

Yeah. Because that's new and exciting. It's not like people have been farming mats for 8 years now. Oh, wait, it actually is exactly like that.

Originally Posted by Strangewayes

Dungeons

That would have been nice if there were more than six of them this expansion. WotLK started out with twice as many and ended with almost three times as many. With only six of them it only takes a week to work through all of them. It gets old and repetitive, kind of like raids, dailies, and world bosses.

Originally Posted by Strangewayes

Scenarios

Group quests, you mean. I liked those better when you only had to endure them once per character. They're not something I want to do every single day. Every one of them boils down to killing trash for about 20 minutes, killing a boss, and then you're done. Most of the time no healing or tanking is even required.

Originally Posted by Strangewayes

Pet Battles

For the cost of a one month sub I can buy an old Pokemon title and do pet battles forever without having to pony up $15 per month. Adding these to WoW was actually a pretty big waste of resources on Blizzard's part, IMO.

Originally Posted by Strangewayes

Challenge Dungeons

Except no one does them because there is no gear associated with them. Unfortunately I can't do those if no one will queue for them.

Originally Posted by Strangewayes

Brawlers Guild

Because you don't need raid gear to do that or anything...

Originally Posted by Strangewayes

Challenge Arena
Battlegrounds
Rated Battlegrounds
Arena

So you're telling all those casual PvEers to PvP instead. Seriously?

Originally Posted by Strangewayes

Old Raids and Dungeons
Old Rep grinds

We've had eight years to do that already. Remember that Blizzard actually wants to retain subscriptions.

Originally Posted by Strangewayes

Talking to other people in chat about organizing a Flex Raid (ironically similar to World Boss groups)

Yeah... let's talk about raiding. That's exciting.

Originally Posted by Strangewayes

Flipping items on the Auction House/Checking the BMAH

Some people do that, but honestly I would rather buy a stock market simulation game if I wanted to do that. Those don't cost $15 per month.

Originally Posted by Strangewayes

Achievements

How could I forget?!? After /loving every animal on Eastern Kingdoms, Kalimdor, Outlands, and Northrend, I just can't wait to seek out critters on Pandaria! Again, this was new and exciting 5 years ago. It's not new or exciting now.

Originally Posted by Strangewayes

Originally LFR was there to "See the content"

That was only part of it. LFR was intended for gearing all along, as Blizzard stated even before they released it:

Q.Who is Raid Finder for?
A. Raid Finder is primarily intended for players who don’t already raid consistently. These are players who may not have had the opportunity to take part in raid content due to scheduling conflicts, playtime constraints, limited access to other raid-capable players, or a lack of experience with higher-end content. These players may want to experience World of Warcraft’s raid content and storyline without being able to commit to the additional time investment of a raiding guild. The Raid Finder is also a great way to quickly and easily gear up alternate characters without having to worry about raid lockouts.

thats not what players really wanted, they wanted to feel like they were Raiders

I have yet to see a non-raider who asked for LFR. Someone tried to show me some posts to prove it once, but upon reading them it was revealed that the poster was a raider who was frustrated with the difficulty of organizing raids. Every single time. I hate to burst that bubble, but casual players never wanted raids and never asked for them.

Originally Posted by Strangewayes

They wanted rewards from it as well. A new shiny carrot to follow.

Of course they want rewards! Otherwise what's the point of the game? There's a reason players gain levels and more powerful gear. That's the game's draw: the false sense of accomplishment. Casual players crave that just as much as raiders.

Originally Posted by Strangewayes

So now LFR is considered raiding by Blizzard, with its own tiers and rewards.

Well, yes. What else is there to do aside from the repetitive grind fests you suggested above? In fact, I would argue that LFR is as much of a repetitive ground as the rest, except it takes hours to complete so it doesn't feel as repetitive.

Originally Posted by Strangewayes

Could you tell me if you've returned a game to a store before and told them you didn't have time to finish it? Or it would be too long and arduous to complete the game on hard and see the special ending? Because honestly that's what people that defend LFR sound like to me.

Could you tell me what other game I have to pay $15 a month for? No one is asking for their money back, but no one is obligated to keep paying a sub for WoW if Blizzard won't produce content that they can complete on their schedule. For pretty much any other game I get frustrated, I put it down for a month or two, and then I come back to it without having to pony up more cash. Once I have the game it's mine forever. It's not getting nerfed any time soon. That's why this comparison to other games makes no sense.

Last edited by Ronduwil; 2013-11-04 at 08:05 AM.

Originally Posted by CandyCotton Marshmallows

People need to get over the gear color (and themselves). It doesn't matter, and it shouldn't matter what other players have either. Worry about your damn self. Live your life by that. If you want to concern yourself with someone else, then worry about HELPING them, not putting them down or making sure you stand out as better than them.

Maybe the game would be better with more low DPS nice guys and fewer high DPS jerks? -- Ghostcrawler, Twitter, 6/29/13

The days of wanting to join a guild to do PvE and see content are dead. Any guilds still active are filled with people who have played together for eternity, or will fall apart after a tier.

This game is not really worthy of the title "World of Warcraft". World of Warcraft ended when Arthas died, and everything after has been World of Warcraft 2.

Philosophies have changed so drastically after the introduction of the LFG tech, that it changed the entire way the game is played. It's like if the game Risk were changed in 2013 to include a player with a 10 pound paperweight called the "Atomic Bomb", and he just throws it at the board when he has enough units to do so. Same name, different game.

The 1 and only thing I don't like about LFR is someone trying to come in and raid heroics saying they know how to do the bosses because they top DPS in LFR.

When does that happen? If you're letting someone who has only ever done LFR into your heroic raids your raid leader is to blame, not the LFR hero.

Originally Posted by Wheeler

If you've ever had a player fresh out of LFR, claiming they know heroic mechanics, in your heroic progression group - Unfortunately you have the worst recruitment process ever.

Exactly. Don't blame LFR for that.

Originally Posted by CandyCotton Marshmallows

People need to get over the gear color (and themselves). It doesn't matter, and it shouldn't matter what other players have either. Worry about your damn self. Live your life by that. If you want to concern yourself with someone else, then worry about HELPING them, not putting them down or making sure you stand out as better than them.

Maybe the game would be better with more low DPS nice guys and fewer high DPS jerks? -- Ghostcrawler, Twitter, 6/29/13

I don't get why all these people who don't do LFR because they raid normal/heroic whine about something that they aren't doing something anyway.
Something that a LOT of players in wow do, because they either can't always come to a raid twice a week or aren't good enough to do even flex, LFR is the place where they go.
About gear from LFR, this is a lot below flex/normal/heroic gear. LFR people don't get the same gear as flex/normal/heroic raiders, so i don't get why they are even acting so jaelous towards LFR people, the people that have lesser gear than the flex/normal/heroic raiders.

From my viewpoint. I was doing LFR since MoP to the end of ToT. And I couldn't accept what type of "play" they created. Just like this, I find that's a big lie that feels something like placebo. Nothing more, and nothing less, but all the game (hardcores, casuals and lazy people) are affected in some way by this tool, transforming World of Wacraft to something more "rare" than what flying mounts did in Cata.
And because of this, I unsubed. But Blizzcon and hope are pushing me in to this forum to try to know the direction of the new expansion.